PASADENA — Cal’s hopes for a bowl game are hanging by a thread, if that.

The Bears’ last-second 30-27 loss to UCLA late Friday night left the Bears (5-7) one victory short of the minimum for bowl eligibility. Their chances hinge on there not being enough six-win teams to fill all the bowls. Even then, they are far down the list of 5-win teams that would be considered.

“It’s an awful feeling in there right now,” Golden Bears coach Justin Wilcox said of the locker room. “It really hurts. There’s not a lot that you can say that makes (the players) feel a lot better.”

Cal rallied from a 27-17 deficit to force a 27-27 tie. Matt Anderson’s 60th career field goal — a school record — got the Bears to within a touchdown with 8:35 to play. The Bears got that touchdown with 2:22 remaining when Russ Bowers kicked his fourth field goal, a 20-yard effort, with 8:35 left. Then with 2:22 remaining, Bowers threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Veasy.

“We thought we were going into overtime,” running back Patrick Laird. “I thought, ‘Hey, our defense is going to get a stop and we’re going to get the ball and score before overtime.’ We had drawn up some plays.”

Linebacker Alex Funches believed the same thing.

“I’m thinking, ‘We’re going to stop them in the first four plays and give the ball back to our offense,’ ” Funches said. “Every snap we were on that field, we were fighting as a team.”

But the Bruins drove from their 25-yard line to Cal’s 20. J.J. Molson’s 37-yard field goal with four seconds left sealed the Bears’ 13th consecutive road loss and effectively ended their season.

–Laird, a walk-on running back who ranked third on the depth chart during spring practice, carried 32 times for 178 yards to finish the season with 1,127.

“I may look back at it next spring and be happy about it,” Laird said of becoming the 19th 1,000-yard rusher in school history. “But right now, I’m bummed for our seniors.”

–Another member of the program might be leaving. Offensive coordinator Beau Baldwin, who joined the staff this year, could become the new head coach at Oregon State, various reports state. Baldwin served as Eastern Washington’s head coach for nine seasons before moving to Berkeley.

More in College Sports

Let’s be perfectly clear here: 1. I do not think USC should leave the Pac-12. 2. I do not believe there is any chance in the foreseeable future that the Trojans will become an Independent, or even seriously consider it. 3. There are non-lunatic USC fans who have become increasingly frustrated with the Pac-12 and believe that it would be...

Good news for the Pac-12: Stanford plays Kansas next week, so the conference is guaranteed to collect at least one more out-of-league victory. Because, of course, the Pac-12 owns the Jayhawks. (Joking, mostly.) The bad news: The Pac-12 has another dozen dates with the Big West, Big Sky, West Coast and Mountain West. Because, of course, the Pac-12 has lost...

Everything changed on Dec. 12, 2002, when Utah introduced Urban Meyer as its head coach. It changed for the Utes and for college football in the western third of the country, as Meyer help lay the groundwork, in two brilliant seasons, for Utah’s eventual move into the Pac-12.

The Pac-12 has produced a series of dark-horse candidates for the Heisman Trophy in recent years. If that trend holds for 2018, the conference’s leading contender could very well reside in Eugene. The Hotline assesses the top contenders for ’18 who aren’t, as of yet, actual contenders.